Mud Islands, Port Phillip Bay, Victoria

BirdLife Bayside members and friends visited Mud Islands on 22 Feb 2014. Below are some photos I took on the day.To view images from my visits to Mud Islands in 2012, please click on the date.

Above: Red-capped Plover on a beach beside the lagoon.

View from the Sorrento car park before catching the Rorqual to Mud Islands. Calm sea and cloud broken by crepuscular rays.

From Mud Islands. The Rorqual departing after we waded the last few metres to shore.

View looking back with ibis flying overhead, a touch of blue in the sky and a silver sliver on the sea.

Welcome Swallows flew between their favourite perches not far from where we landed. I crouched behind a bush waiting for one to alight in front of me.

Eventually I left the swallows and tried to catch up to the rest of our group further along the beach. We were headed in an anticlockwise direction around the island.

View across to the lagoon from a sand hill above the beach.

By the time I caught up to the others they had seen a good variety of bird species, including a white Bar-tailed Godwit among some of the regular colour. I missed them. Arthur has a photo on his website, My Australian View.

There were still plenty of other birds about.

Red-necked Stints foraging in the shallows.

A Fairy Tern patrolling above its section of beach...

... was not happy to find an Australian Pied Oystercatcher invading its space.

Part of the beach.

Further around the island we found a convenient way through to the lagoon.

Looking across a wide beach by the lagoon. In the distance are Port Phillip Bay, a row of swans, and the mainland.

In and around the lagoon were several more bird species.

A Red-capped Plover came over to investigate (the same bird as in the header photo).

One of numerous pelicans that flew overhead.

A Sharp-tailed Sandpiper foraging alone in a corner of the lagoon.

A Curlew Sandpiper wading in the lagoon.

Another Curlew Sandpiper, but this one was in breeding plumage.

Those of us who returned to our starting point via the edge of the lagoon waded through the Mud Islands mud. Most people walked back along the nice clean sandy beach ... but their way was windier.

Before returning to Sorrento the Rorqual took as to see a well-used platform.

Australasian Gannets on top, Black-faced Cormorants in the middle, Australian Fur Seals below.

We made one more detour before returning to Sorrento.

Pied Cormorants using another handy non-natural object.

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